Tag Archives: Responsibility

Wow… as Bob Crachit would say, “I am behind my time…” Indeed life has been crazier than usual and apart from a bit of blogging comments, I’ve had little time for the blog and particularly for the Manifesto. But, here’s blog post #54, and more to come.

… As a true T’Sing Tarleynan female would answer she replies, “What I think no matter. Men, they decide. Woman think? That is waste. Eat, sleep, make love, train to fight and kill. That is fighter woman do. Think waste energy; mix up in head. Make weak, stupid. I be strong soon, strong and fast. I train good. I live long. Maybe you like me, you take me. Hold me, make love. Be lover, be friend. Be family to me. I train with you, huh?” She pinches my muscles on my tight stomach. “You like old skin, strongest of fighter woman they say. Desert Beast, huh? Proud I be slave to you. Teach me strength you do. I fight for you.”

[end blog post #53]______________________[begin blog post #54]

Chapter 25 – Measuring Times by my Losses

And so begins another episode. Seems I’m now measuring my times by my losses. While I remain awake, having now cradled this new child between my legs and in my arms and lulled her to sleep, I keep thinking of Deirdre. I feel my emptiness and the suffering of my heart is worse than what I suffered in the dungeons of the inquisition. Especially do I rue the fact I could not say goodbye. That hurts more than anything. Did she suspect during those last hours? She would have known something was going on. She would have felt it, sensed it. She would also have known that the discovery of it would cause us great pain and thus would have kept silent.

‘Ah, Deirdre. Soon you will wake up on a world I hope is beautiful to behold. A world that will cause you much less pain than this one. I would have invited you to find your way to Altaria, as I did for Tiegli, but that would have been a violation of my “contract” with the Koronese. They saved you because they need you, girl. They hope to discover the source of your miraculous empathic nature. Perhaps they can isolate those genes and clone truly empathic Cydroids? Perhaps a child from a Koronese father who will have your strange nature? Please help them, Deirdre, for to that it seems you were called. For that we met and your physical life was saved. Take care. I shall love you forever…’

Tiki turns and sighs. I look at the small sleeping girl-woman in the pale light of Albaral. I vow not to become attached to this one. And how am I going to go about avoiding that? I’m not made that way here. Something’s changed from the mind I had during the Melkiar wars. The very paucity of love here has made me want to become pure love to these children. Looks like I’m heading for another compromise that is going to peel another layer of protection from my heart and make me bleed internally even more than externally.

“Teach me strength you do.” she said without any doubt I could do so. Damn right I will ‘teach you strength.’ I will make you like the rock of this place. I will give you all you need to be as happy as any child can be in such circumstances. I will give you all the advice and training I’m capable of. I’ll make you into a superb T’Sing Tarleynan fighting machine – the best of their own they’ve ever seen, though I’m certain not a one of them will be able to appreciate your talents or skills All you will remain for them is someone, no not someone, but a thing, to perform indignities upon, to damage, defeat, destroy and finally, to kill.’

Maybe, now that my mind is clearer, I will find a way to give this being a “soul” – a mind implant, a gift of some long-forgotten goddess that will change her into a born-again human. As long as I’m measuring my times here by my losses, I can afford to lose another dream. I can dream, no one can take that away from me.

And in this dream I must also discover, not the nature of evil, but the final path to its source from which it can be defeated. Evil, you are my ultimate enemy.

When Tiki sleeps peacefully against me and the ache of losing Deirdre has dulled to a tolerably manageable level I will perform this exercise. I will exorcise from myself the power of that dormant monster; of all the evil that ever touched me, that I have touched and that I have worked with. I will remember the feelings that it gave me. That horror that I buried deep in my subconscious so long ago, the parts of it that thrilled me when I refused to consider alternatives; those I killed in turn after they had killed all that I loved. That source of evil within myself I will expose to the light of what I have become in this place. Thus I will bring forth the rest of the knowledge I need to complete my task here, by “faith” in life and by example for others.

The process: Access, study, feel, understand, delete. Yeah, I should have been a Cydroid. For it is one of our truisms that we, human and Avatari alike, cannot delete our past; cannot disown it. We can but dis-empower or empower it according to our present need and understanding.

And in my sleep I dream of the constant we call “evil” but it is a sweet dream, not a nightmare.

The 2003 psychological thriller Dogville depicts a bigoted community that accepts to harbour a fugitive from the mob but decides she would have to pay a price. The movie goes on to demonstrate how the price she must pay keeps going up, so high that in the end she is near death when her pursuers finally find her. Then comes the interesting twist as Grace’s terrible secret is revealed.

What is planet earth, in particular the “First World” but a Dogville? The only people who “have” are those who find the means to exploit those who have less, or have nothing except the land they live on, unless it’s their bodies that can be sold for slave labour, prostitution, whatever makes a profit. It’s no secret that we of the West are the “haves” and that the rest of the world has been paying an ever-higher price to us just to stay alive while we maintain our consumer lifestyles. So far, no exaggeration. But there is more, much more.

It isn’t enough that the poor are disenfranchised, dispossessed, persecuted and murdered in their own lands. If they manage to escape they must then become the scapegoats through which the self-righteous Dogvillians can continue to justify their enslavement, thefts of resources, rapes and open murdering rampages. After having been forced from their lands, no matter where they go, they will face resentment, hate, be ostracized, reviled, endlessly exploited and as just happened in New Zealand, massacred.

So one Dogvillian decides to be less hypocritical, more open than the rest, and turns his guns on helpless people in a mosque and all hell breaks loose. Yet two days before the massacre in Christchurch, US artillery massacred 50 civilians in the village of Baghouz, and quote: “On Monday, US warplanes attacked Baghouz, killing at least 50 people. Details on what the intended target was is unclear, but the reports suggest that the dead were mostly women and children… In the past few months, US airstrikes backing the SDF offensive have killed hundreds, if not thousands, of civilians. With thousands of civilians still believed to be in Baghouz, the US strikes are undermining the SDF’s effort to convince them to leave, by showing that those who try to leave may be targeted.” (End quote) (https://talesfromtheloublog.wordpress.com/2019/03/13/us-airstrikes-kill-at-least-50-mostly-civilians-in-eastern-syria/

My point here is very simple: where are the screaming headlines, the heads of state standing at their podiums, the social media erupting with indignant cries against war crimes and institutionalized mass murder in Syria? All I heard was dead silence, and that happened just a few days before Christchurch. Well, that, plus it’s been happening for years, witness the refugee crisis. Where is your outcry over those murders?

So my question is simple: why is it totally acceptable to murder women and children in an undeclared hence “unofficial” war but it suddenly become opprobrious if the same or lesser crimes are committed by individuals? Who is the greatest criminal here? On one hand a malcontent, or a few of them, gun down some people in a building, or an arena. On the other hand, all members of any self-styled democracy are in agreement with the massacre of innocent civilians in places where the killer, the aggressor, has no business being. One massacre is widely and openly deplored while a greater massacre lasting years is not just tolerated but openly funded, justified, rationalized and everybody sleeps soundly knowing the bombs are falling like rain “where they should.” Western hypocrisy astounds me.

I’ll tell you this, people of the Warmongering West: Grace, the helpless dispossessed being exploited and murdered by you as willing participants and cheering spectators in these hunger games have a terrible secret. You’re all about to find out what that is. Maybe it’s time to watch the movie Dogville again. You might see many faces you recognize.

There are times when, as I read stuff, I wish I was an Android with a hard drive instead of a leaky human brain so I could store all the information and have it “there” at my fingertips (so to speak) when I think about something, or quote something I’ve read, with full ability to regain the context of it. “Sigh!” – it doesn’t seem to be happening. Oh well, at least I have learned to speed things up in collecting information; to turn my email program (that wonderful Microsoft Outlook 2002 which nothing can touch for clarity and efficiency) into a library of congress sort of filing system…

Here are a few “odds ‘n ends” from my eclectic collection of thoughts and ideas and word imagery.

CRONY CAPITALISM is a term describing an economy in which success in business depends on close relationships between business people and government officials. It may be exhibited by favoritism in the distribution of legal permits, government grants, special tax breaks, or other forms of state interventionism.

THEREMIN: electronic musical instrument played without touching, invented by a Russian physicist, Leon Theremin circa 1919 (patented in 1928). Used in popular music of many movie soundtracks.

ANODYNE PHRASE is a weak statement intended to hide an ugly truth. Another name for that would be political correctness.

UTILITARIANISM: Doctrine that the useful is the good; especially as elaborated by Jeremy Bentham and James Mill; the aim was said to be the greatest happiness for the greatest number. (Imagine that! The more you slave for your elites, the happier you will be!)

THE EASIEST WAY to solve a problem is to deny its existence (Isaac Asimov)

ELECTRICITY is NOT an energy SOURCE.

IF THE CIA ever told the truth, it would genetically implode (David Icke)

THE GREAT PYRAMID weighs 6 million tons; covers 13 acres; is 750’ per side; 481’ tall and contains over 2.5 million individual blocks of stone. None of this answers my question: why was it built, and by whom?

AMERICAN EXEPTIONALISM: the US’s power to make and break deals world-wide with no accountability to results.

I AM WRITING the book of human sins. When I’m done I’ll cast it into the fire and all their sins will be gone. (The Island – Russian movie)

THE UNTIED NATIONS – once known as the United Nations…

BRICS nations: Brazil, Russia, India, China, S. Africa.

IDIOCRACY: It’s hard to be smart with so many dopamine-producing distractions and so much online approval for our uneducated opinions. (from a Joel Stein article in Times magazine)

ECONOMICS is not a science, it’s a set of values pretending to be science.

IT’S DISCOURAGING to think how many people are shocked by honesty and how few by deceit (Noel Coward)

IT IS MY OPINION, subject to change only under extreme duress, that mankind (Earthians as my Teachers call them) were genetically engineered and remain unnaturally so. That tends to explain a few ridiculous things the species clings to as if its survival depended on them, like Religion, Politics and Money.

SOME WORDS that need re-defining: salacious means lust or moral looseness whereas pulchritude means a physically beautiful woman. I would turn those definitions around. Salacious sounds so much nicer than pulchritude, I mean, really…

PRECARIAT: the growing majority population whose lives are marked by precariousness, lack, anxiety and fear.

USSA, acronym for United Slave States of America. Another acronym that needs no interpretation: UKKKA.

PSYCHIATRY is the science of lies. (Thomas Szaz)

FEDERAL RESERVES is a parasite.

THE SUREST SIGN that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us. (Bill Waterson)

WHY THE MILITARY needs so much money to accomplish so little is explained by this military description of a screwdriver – “rotational torque-adjustable fastener applicator.”

WHEN FACTS don’t fit preconceptions, deny the facts.

US DIPLOMACY can be fully explained in three words: Convert, Co-opt, Conquer.

A FORTNIGHT is 14 consecutive days, or two weeks. (Go figure that one out!)

DEMOCRACY is a chimera invented to keep the bottom dwellers in their place without having to resort to police state brutality or chancing violent revolutions. Democracy and Capitalism are diametrical opposites, but who notices these little things?

PEOPLE in general have an innate need to find something larger than themselves to be a part of. (Matthew Quirk)

CANT: stock phrases become nonsense through endless repetition.

AD HOMINEM: appealing to personal considerations rather than to facts or reason.

TUGAREZ VRAS means “Thank you” in Breton. (That should be my mother tongue but my parents didn’t use it so defaulted to French. Life can be so unfair…)

… and finally, let’s give full credit to computerization when it is due. In looking up the word “eclectic” in my Wordweb dictionary using the control-right click sequence, this was the result: word not found: “Lrzlililﬁwlectiifrzlﬁlnrs” – I couldn’t make that up! (Maybe I should re-think that android brain?)

Why don’t we get to choose our life? Come on, is there a more legitimate question than that? What’s more important than one’s life? If one’s life is the most important thing one can experience “in life,” how can it be that given a certain age, we are not faced with that choice, literally forced to make such a choice knowing society and civilization will hold us accountable for that choice throughout all future interactions with it?

There is something really strange I find living on this world, in this society, and that’s how little people value the human aspect of their own children. As property you find much attachment, but as raising responsible individuals who must soon make personally and socially impacting life choices? Not only do they not bring them up to face the inevitability of having to live a personal life filled with responsibilities entailing consequences that will follow them to their dying day, but they so easily abandon them into the hands of strangers and institutions without really caring about what they are being taught, what they are learning and how that will affect their future life as human beings. If they seem to care at all, it’s whether the children are equipped to get a job, a profession and will it guarantee a good income. In short, will they be able to cut it in the rat race? Values? Ethics? Virtue? Honor? Duty? Trustworthiness? Even temperance or decency? Not a high priority are they, and how could they be when the leaders themselves are never held to such standards?

Of course that reflects on how the parents themselves were raised; what their values were, and if they had any beyond the previously mentioned: success and money, or maybe for variety, money and success? And if that didn’t pan out too well, satisfied they didn’t end up making a career of crime and jail time, or securing a permanent position on social welfare.

Obviously, as far as I’ve observed and experienced, nobody gets to choose their own life; they just tumble into some corner or hole society leaves open or unguarded for a moment. They stand there, leaning on the wall, looking at surrounding walls and wondering, year after year, what comes next; wondering when the next shoe is going to drop if whatever check is going to be enough to fake it through another month.

This is how it all started for me too; I wasn’t anything special. As soon as “official” grade school began I was installed on the see-saw, severely warned to get those best grades. Competition was the name of the game, and winning was everything. I should point out here that as much as “they” tried later with applied political correctness to guarantee everybody a top mark, they still haven’t figured out how in a competitive system everybody can be the best and walk off with the highest mark. It’s a terrible dilemma, isn’t it. But I’m sure some Mensa brain is bound to figure it out without violating the first rule of competitive bidding for a dwindling job market: dog eat dog. Meanwhile everybody is shoved into the brainwash machine and fed the Brave New World belief: “Everybody, believe you can be top dog, and you will be…” Slosh, slosh; slosh, slosh, goes the Big Brainwashing machine everywhere on the planet, 24/7, running full bore in deep wash cycle.

So, back to the original question: what if we got to choose our life or put another way, our purpose in life? What if we had to sign some societal contract based on wisdom and knowledge handed down through our family generations and our society, dutifully held on to and practiced by our parents, extended families, neighbours, friends, business people, government representatives, religious leaders and so on?

What if we got to choose our life’s purpose based on the very best that a human society can offer and demonstrate? How would that be for a start to a young adult’s life, say at the age of sixteen? Where would we stand? Would one be able to stand up in any year thereafter, in front of one’s class, or in church or at a community or union meeting, or when accepting a political or other high office, and say, “Thanks to the examples of my parents, siblings, teachers, peers, leaders, co-workers, today I can truthfully say that I understand what it means to be a member of the human race and I have demonstrated those qualities in my life since I chose, and agreed, to do so within this society”?

And could the community truthfully respond with its own mantra: “We as a people declare this to be an inalienable truth, that inasmuch as it rests within our power as a people to live thus, we have caused no harm to come to any life, or to our world, nor shall we allow such to happen in the future. By this choice we declare and claim today that we are true human beings”?

I always wonder about things like that. Seems simple enough to me and I’m thinking, if I can live like that, and I observe that it’s a good thing, why wouldn’t everybody else want to do the same? And if they do want to live thus, why don’t they? Why not just stop following stupid and acting stupid?

The following is a quote from James Baldwin’s 1963 book in which he discusses “the Negro problem” in early Sixties’ America, and the corresponding hypocrisy of American Christianity, of both, white and black America.

Except for the fact that I personally know “we” do not return to a terrifying darkness, I completely agree with the contents of this quote.

“Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death–ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible for life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return.” ― James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time.